Draco at Dawn
by ClarkStark
Summary: Eight years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy reflects on his past and his future.


The sun peeking through the bedroom blinds did not awaken Draco Malfoy as it normally did. Sleep had eluded him, and Draco had risen well before dawn. He sat in the kitchen, stirring his tea, as the morning light found his side of the bed empty.

It had been eight years to the day since the Battle of Hogwarts, and though the nightmares had stopped, the Dark Mark on Draco's left forearm, though naught now but a tattoo, ached. It had taken him months to understand that the Dark Lord could not rise again, that the pain he felt was a vestige of his trauma, but in the years that followed, the pain of fear had been replaced with the pain of regret. Though his time among the Death Eaters had been brief, he had seen terrible things. Done terrible things…

A large contributor to his unease, he was certain, was his continued residence in Malfoy Manor. Before the War, it had been his father's bastion of dark influence, which the young and impressionable Draco had not bothered to question. Who would, of course, when born into such privilege? It was not the way of the world for the powerful to worry about the ethics of their comfortable lifestyles. This had no doubt made the estate all the more suitable as Lord Voldemort's base of operations. He had not appreciated questions beyond how one could better serve him. A mindless estate for mindless soldiers…

He would not give up the house, though. Despite the darker chapters in its history, Draco was determined to restore his family's name.

He had been surprised that the Ministry had allowed the Malfoys to keep the estate. They had barely managed to escape imprisonment. Draco imagined that freedom should have been generous enough, and yet, here he sat, still independently wealthy, happily married, and –

He sighed, half-amused and half-exhausted, as the peals of an infant's crying echoed down the corridors.

_I'm already up_, he supposed. _Best to let Astoria sleep._

He set his tea down upon the table and departed from the kitchen, ascending the staircase to his son's nursery. As he traversed the hall, he heard Astoria turning over in their bed.

"Draco?" he heard her murmur, as though he were still beside her.

"I've got it, love," he whispered, leaning in through the bedroom doorway. "Go back to sleep."

She sighed contentedly and nestled into the sheets, and after taking a moment to appreciate the sight, Draco continued onward.

The nursery was a spacious room. Not needlessly large, but roomy enough for Draco and Astoria to stretch out on the floor and play with their son. It had been something they had both agreed on, that they should know their child and let him know them, play with them, grow with them. Distance from his parents had made Draco all the more eager to please them, and considering how it had affected who Draco had become, it was not a relationship he wanted for his own son.

"Hey, Scorpy," Draco whispered, picking up his little boy, whose wails turned to quiet sobs into his father's bathrobe. "My big man," Draco cooed as he brushed the fabric away from his son's face. "What's wrong, eh?" The babe had not soiled himself, Draco could tell. "You hungry? Is that it?"

Draco reached into his pocket for his wand, but, finding it empty, realized he had left his wand in the kitchen. No matter. It was only downstairs, and filling a bottle manually was no difficult task once they got there.

"Come on," he whispered into Scorpius' tuft of blond hair. "Let's get you sorted."

Sorted… Now that brought back memories.

For a moment, Draco returned to his first evening at Hogwarts. It was the night he had joined his family as a Slytherin, and the night he had made a bitter rival of a certain Gryffindor, one who, seven years later, had saved his life. He had envied Potter, though even now he would never admit it outright. He had thought Potter would never have to try, never have to struggle to make genuine friends. His fame solidified his place in history, where Draco had only his Malfoy name, shared with hundreds of others over the centuries. Harry Potter had been a person, Draco Malfoy a thread in a quilt.

How wrong he had been, of course. Everyone had their struggles, even the famous.

It was why Draco had chosen to pursue the career he did, despite his wealth. He had become what Hermione Granger, now a Ministry worker, had called a _psychologist._ It was a Muggle term, but it suited him. St. Mungo's had their healers of the body, but the mind and heart were matters they had not bothered to study, and although Draco and Granger would never be friends, he had appreciated her professional attitude in arranging funding for a small branch of the hospital to be dedicated to mental and emotional health. He had heard whispers among his Ministry connections that Potter, of all people, had put in a good word as well, so if his former adversary had indeed played a part in the matter, then perhaps, Draco thought, both had grown beyond their schoolyard rivalry.

He wondered how Scorpius would fare when his time came to attend Hogwarts. If destiny was kind, he would have a much easier time, and Draco and Astoria would be proud of him however he was sorted, his grandparents be damned, both pairs of them.

Scorpius sucked on his bottle contentedly, snuggled in his father's arms. It made sense that he would be hungry, Draco decided, as he struggled, with some amusement, not to doze off. After all, the sun was rising, and a new day lay before them.


End file.
